The proportion of pavements in Virginia considered deficient exceeded the established target of 18 percent by 2007 and has continued to grow by 2 to 4 percent per year. Traditional maintenance resurfacing, which typically involves a periodic 1½-inch to 2-inch layer of asphalt concrete, is rapidly becoming a luxury as construction material prices continue to go up and revenues decline.  For this reason, pavement engineers are looking for every opportunity to address structurally adequate pavements with lower-cost preservation treatments. 

This research proposes to perform a preliminary cost and service-level comparison of thin pavement preservation treatments for use in Virginia.  The expected product will be a catalog of thin-surface preservation alternatives for VDOT to use.  This catalog will include a list of associated benefits and costs for each alternative, as well as a simple economic tradeoff procedure that can be used to objectively relate one option to another. This catalog will include a list of associated benefits and costs for each alternative, as well as a simple economic tradeoff procedure that can be used to objectively relate one option to another.